A lot of attention to family tiers and continued debate about indecency on TV this week. Insight Communications became the latest cable company to announce a family programming tier, while DirecTV and DISH both hopped on the family tier train as well. Yesterday, Senator Ted Stevens convened another Senate Commerce Committee hearing about “Decency in Media.” As in the previous two hearings on the topic, the usual parties spoke – broadcast, cable, satellite, special interest groups such as Parents Television Council, and the venerable Jack Valenti.

Much of the discourse wasn’t new – the PTC stuck to its familiar call for a la carte, for instance -- but there were some interesting developments. Highlights:

---EchoStar CEO Charlie Ergen got to the heart of the matter on the limitations cable and satellite distributors face in packaging channels to meet consumer and Congressional demands: carriage contracts with network owners usually don’t permit it. He noted that station owners also frequently require distributors to carry niche cable networks – including many with questionable programming – in order to distribute the station owners’ broadcast channels and popular cable networks.

---Stevens actually praised the introduction of family tiers and indicated he wouldn’t support a la carte legislation, for now at least, since distributors are addressing the concerns of Congress and consumers.

---The lack of sports networks on the announced family tiers drew complaints from Virginia Senator George Allen and New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg. (Wasn’t it a live sports program that ignited this debate it the first place?)

---Valenti, former head of the Motion Picture Association of America, announced a comprehensive, $250 million ad campaign to educate consumers on the tools they already have at their fingertips to control what their children see, and don’t see, on TV. (More about the ad campaign in this Mediaweek article.)

Obviously, the decency debate continues, although it does seem that the family tiers announcements have helped quell some of the rancor.